Fenlanders

Perfectly flat source

of glass-half-empty wisdom

(You never gain without you lose),

these drains and fenland ooze;

unbroken horizontals

bred smallholders quick

to silence, feuds.

Cousins, not on speaking terms,

learnt allegiances, who was who,

precise degrees of indifference to use

in the family’s every orbit.

A lack of generosity in nature, then,

accounting for a hardness of heart?

Well, yes, there was that – breeding fruit

and veg from plots that felt the brunt

of poor winters, North Sea winds,

relentless, giddying skies.

No wonder they took the dim view,

were adamant they knew what they knew,

distrust of water, close observation

of changes, levels and rules,

the fragile treachery of things,

a closed world better off for keeping closed.

From here, though, also, eccentricities of will:

great-grandfather who made do

and the most out of left-overs,

sticks, old hat. Always on the loose,

ditch-strider, habitual trespasser,

or, back home, his having to explain,

if anyone should ask, why the swan

he’d killed was better called a goose.

Such stamina for living on the hoof:

as if each morning, bent-double and running,

he was tempting snipers to shoot him down,

which on such open ground they could have easily done.

'Fenlanders' appears in the collection Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2012), available here